Griffith Mountain (11,568) & Alpine Peak (11,552) by Brian Schultz Friday August 27, 2021

Roundtrip mileage: ~7 miles
Elevation gain: 2,900'
Start to finish: 6 hours 15 minutes

I drove up the Mt Evans highway last night and looked for a dispersed camp area along West Chicago Creek road. I didn't find anything and considered truckcamping at the Hells Hole trailhead but a sign said no overnight camping. The campground before the Hells Hole trailhead was a bit pricey ($20), considering I'd just be sleeping in my truck, but the campground host told me dispersed camping could be found along the Hefferman Gulch road.

That road is the next one up the highway so I drove up to it and quickly found a nice site, with a sign indicating no camping beyond that point.

I'd be using Paul Stratmoen's approach for these peaks and parked at a pullout along West Chicago Creek road just past private property. This small parking area had an information sign but I was worried about parking there because Clear Creek County is hard-nosed about parking on their county roads. Fortunately, I wasn't ticketed and/or towed.

I began at 7:30 AM under sunny clear skies and shortly caught up to the old road I was looking for. The road/trail started out fine but I eventually lost it in a small grassy field and set a waypoint there to mark the spot.

Occasionally I picked up remnants of a trail afterwards but finally gave up and pinned another waypoint for the saddle below Griffith and set a bearing to it. There was lots of deadfall to contend with but my bearing worked well and the difficulties eased as I started up the ridge to Griffith.

I passed a weather station just below the summit and arrived on top at 9:55. It's a nice summit with terrific views and I stayed for 20 minutes despite strong gusting winds. The descent to the Griffith/Alpine saddle went quickly and the terrain on Alpine had much easier bushwhacking.

I arrived on the summit (photo 1, photo 2, photo 3, photo 4) at 11:20. Despite gusting winds on top as well, I stayed for 40 minutes before departing at 12:00. Instead of returning to the saddle, I set a bearing for the waypoint I set at the grassy field.

The bushwhacking on the descent went surprisingly well and I picked up the trail/road without any difficulty. Once it became more defined as a road, I followed it a bit further, descending to a drainage and crossing over it which put me close to the private property. This was easy to contour around and I was back on the road and my parking spot at 1:45.